Post date: September 23, 2021 | Blog
How To Choose The Perfect Beard Brush
Any bearded individual knows that beards require maintenance. It’s just a fact of the bearded life. And one of the key parts of this maintenance is brushing and styling your beard using a quality beard brush!
What Is a Beard Brush?
Put simply, a beard brush is a grooming tool that is meant to keep your facial hair healthy, happy, and hydrated. The beard brush is usually composed of a simple handle with protruding natural or synthetic hairs or fibers. Sometimes (like in the case of the Volt Utility Brush) the fibers and boar bristles can be combined and work together in a “do-it-all” brush that tackles everything from styling to cleaning your beard.
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Why Use A Beard Brush?
Who doesn’t want a healthy, happy, and hydrated beard?! How beard brushes achieve these things is the question.
Here are some reasons why you should be brushing/combing your beard, and how a quality brush can transform your beard care and maintenance routine!
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Beard Brushes Remove “Beardruff”
“Beardruff” are the flaky dead skin cells that may inhabit your beard, especially if your beard has a history of being dry, crunchy-feeling, or generally “rough”. Not to fret though, this is a very natural and common phenomenon that many men deal with.
The bristles in quality beard brushes are designed to have a medium stiffness. This means that the brush bristles are hard enough to dig through the hairs and reach the skin (to brush away beardruff) but soft enough not to irritate the skin. This is important! not every brush is made the same, and not every beard brush takes into account how the stiffness of the bristles affects the utility of the brush.
Make sure you find a beard brush with medium tension bristles for maximum beard cleaning effect without being harsh or irritating on the skin.
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Beard Brushes Spread Moisture
One of the main benefits of a good beard brush is its ability to evenly spread oils, moisture, and nourishment throughout your beard. When applying hydrating beard oil or beard balm, your hands often miss important areas. After all, we can only be so thorough with our fingers, especially since we are often just rubbing the top of our beards with nourishment.
Beard brushes are made specifically to spread the moisture among our beard evenly, so that all areas are properly nourished, hydrated, and clean. Brushes are able to do this better than our hands because lots of tiny bristles are more effective at surrounding and depositing the moisture in all of our hair than our large fingers can.
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Beard Brushes Train Hair Growth
Other than the cleansing and moisturizing benefits of beard brushes, the hidden benefit is that a brush will train your hair to grow in a certain direction over time. Considering most brushes are used to sweep beard hair downwards (along the direction of hair growth), when used alongside a styling product like beard balm or wax, your hair will naturally begin to look more orderly, straight, and well-groomed when brushed downwards.
This is because over time the force and hold that is applied by the brush and beard balm will alter the direction of the hair follicles’ natural growth. Instead of hair that grows straight out, looking unruly and unkempt, the hair will grow more parallel to the skin and look more controlled and well-groomed.
What To Look For In A Beard Brush
Not all beard brushes are made equally, and certainly not every manufacturer has the right idea when creating a brush that functions well for its intended purpose. Let’s go over some of the key characteristics that you should always look for when researching beard brushes!
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Natural Materials
Although it may just be our preference as an eco-friendly brand out there, we always encourage that whenever you search for ANY product, you consider the sustainability/recyclability of its materials and the benefit that natural materials have on our environment, just saying!
That being said, whenever we’re looking for a beard brush, we always look for two main materials: A wooden handle, and natural boar bristles.
The wooden handle is for sustainability reasons! No more plastic, pollutants, or dirty oceans. The boar bristles are for comfort and function. Natural boar bristles have the perfect tension for a beard brush, landing it right in that medium-stiffness range where you get the best of both worlds. Boar bristles are stiff enough to reach deep into your beard and clean away all the beardruff or skin cells, but soft enough to avoid harming or irritating your skin.
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Quality Construction
What good are natural materials in a beard brush if it doesn’t last? Although it’s not overly difficult to make a brush, finding a quality brush that will stand the test of time is the trick. Put simply, don’t cheap out here! You don’t need to spend tons of money, but make sure you spend enough to get the last brush you may ever need to buy!
Beard Brush Styles
When choosing a brush, you’ll find many different styles to choose from. We’re going to be covering the two main styles of beard brushes today, the extended handle (styling) brush, and the compact brush, using our own line of premium beard brushes as examples.
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Volt Utility Brush
The Volt Utility Brush is an extended handle brush (Pinewood) with a spiral-like pattern in which boar bristles and nylon ball-tipped fibers are combined. The combination of these bristles turns this brush into the perfect brush for almost every scenario. The boar bristles are soft enough to clean and spread moisture through your beard, and the nylon fibers are stiff enough to straighten even the wildest beards and get rid of kinks and tangles.
The benefit of the extended handle is that you can manipulate the brush more easily in and around your beard. It’s ergonomic shape makes it easy to reach your beard in difficult places such as under your chin and around your jaw. However, this comes at the cost of portability.
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Volt Octo Brush
The Volt Octo Brush is a smaller and more portable beard brush made of all-natural pearwood and natural boar bristles. The benefit of the Octo Brush is its smaller profile, making it more portable and suited for travel.
The Octo brush doesn’t have any nylon bristles, this means the Octo brush is going to be more comfortable for cleaning, and more effective at spreading hydration and essential oils throughout your beard, but less effective at styling and detangling.
Beard Brush Conclusion
So there you have it! The brush you choose is going to depend on a ton of different factors. Are you looking for a brush more suited to styling and detangling (Utility Brush)? Or are you looking for a travel-friendly brush that can clean and hydrate your beard easily and comfortably (Octo Brush)? Either way, you can’t go wrong with VOLT!
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